I was filling out some form the other day, and they asked what my “hometown” was. I had to pause a moment to recall that hometown does not necessarily mean where you were born, but rather where you grew up. In my case, that would probably mean the city where I lived from ages two to eighteen, which was Greensboro, North Carolina, sometimes nicknamed the Gate City for reasons I think I generally found too boring to remember. Anyway, I just found out that back in 1980, Greensboro got a bit of attention because the Greensboro Police Department was using at least one Volkswagen Rabbit.
This would have been a big deal, and while I think I have some vague memories of this from when I was a little kid, that could just be my mind playing tricks on me, as it likes to do, because it thinks that kind of thing is pretty funny. At that time, I think the Greensboro Police Department was fielding mostly Ford Crown Victorias and Chevrolet Caprices, like many police departments across the nation. A little Rabbit was very unusual, unusual enough that Volkswagen thought it’d be a good idea to use the Greensboro Police Rabbit in some advertising.
They made commercials! Like this one:
Now, as tickled as I am to see this commercial, the dusty and atrophied parts of my brain that are associated with feeling some manner of pride or defensiveness on behalf of Greensboro are kicking in. Now, don’t get me wrong: when I was growing up in Greensboro, I usually found it pretty boring, and we called it Greensboring, even. Hell, the Governor’s mansion was hilariously named “Blandwood.”
But Greensboro isn’t really all that boring, and it’s certainly a lot more than what is portrayed in that ad, which is a sort of caricature of the American Southeast, with that jangly music and those verdant, lush trees and probably some kudzu, along with that overdone Southern accent on that cop, an accent that does not even sound like a Greensboro or North Carolina accent at all, and the whole character of that cop seems like a recursively-xeroxed character from The Dukes of Hazard.
They used the car in print advertisements, too, and kept the same “watch your step, son” hokey cop bullshit, though they never specifically said this was from Greensboro. But it was. This crude stereotype was representing a city that was home to the first sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement, the home of the writer O.Henry and newsman Edward R. Murrow, Curly Neal (of the Globetrotters, and who I once saw as a kid at a Winn-Dixie), and also home to a thriving arts scene and a hell of a lot more than that country-fried inanity shown in those ads conveys.
You can get die-cast models of the Greensboro police Rabbit, too, which I was also surprised to discover.
That Rabbit is one of the Westmoreland, Pennsylvania-built Rabbits, which you can tell by its rectangular sealed-beam headlamps and those particular vertical side marker lamps.
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This Instagram post from GMP Performance suggests that the Rabbit was modified with a turbocharger, and was a diesel, as they say in their post:
Throwing it back to 1980 when we turbocharged this MK1 Volkswagen Rabbit for the @greensboropolicedepartment!
We took its factory diesel engine to the next level and added GMP Performance springs and sway bars to support the extra power and sharpen its handling. Averaging nearly 40 MPG and plenty of torque, they weren’t stopping until they caught you!
This is all quite cool, though I feel like any excitement I have is a good bit tempered because my family’s relationship with the Greensboro Police Department wasn’t great, mostly because my parents were once wrongfully arrested for attempted murder by them! I had to bail them out! It’s a whole thing, and I wrote it up at the Old Site, or you can read the exciting and lurid legal brief, if you want. It’s pretty racy! And I’m still a little bitter!
But, that said, I’m still excited to see these old Police VW Rabbit ads, and I’m more excited that it hails from my old hometown. I wonder what happened to the old Police Rabbit?
That yarn about your parents’ arrest is a great one. Thanks for linking to it, Jason.
NYPD uses Smart cars. Saw a couple just this month. Presumably for traffic enforcement, although I suppose slow pursuit in Manhattan traffic would be a good use as well.
Last time I was in Manhattan, I saw Altimas, a Prius, a Smart car, a couple of probably the last of the Impalas in NYPD livery. And NYC was the first place I heard a siren sub-woofer.
I haven’t thought about them in a long time! That was the place Mom went when she wanted a nicer shopping experience than Food Lion, but didn’t want to drive almost an hour to the Harris Teeter.
Aldi bought Winn-Dixie and are converting many of those stores into Aldi. Supermarket-wise, another one bites the dust. I still miss Dominick’s.
Farewell, The Beef People.
The 80s and 90s were an interesting time for police vehicles in my area. City police had Celebritys and Tauruses, county sheriff had XJ Cherokees and even a couple of LR Discoverys. Then there was State Patrol with their Camaros.
Were there any state police that drove Isuzus?
Lately I’ve been trying to make a point to look at the tags and Jason being Jason I’m a little surprised not to see “Attempted Murder” on the list. Bitter indeed, to pass on that!
My hometown had Volvo 240 sedans for police cars briefly in the early ’80s.
Don’t believe it? As proof, the following link is offered from the book of face:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152325435096798&id=57813171797&set=a.312205406797
I don’t see the point in having one Rabbit in the fleet. Two, however, will multiply to hundreds in no time.
Fleet maintenance costs are lower if the fleet keeps reproducing itself. Just pick up a fresh one and park the broken one.
My first speeding ticket was on 95 in NC driving my parents new 1983 Volvo (244)DL – with my Dad in the passenger seat!
We were driving cross country – He was dropping me off at my Grandmother’s in Norfolk and he was taking the car to New Jersey to be shipped to the Azores where his next duty station was.
The policeman saw our CA plates and licenses – and insisted that we pay him our fine on the spot! I didn’t have much cash on me, so Dad had to sign over one of his American Express traveler’s checks to the guy.
As I drove away Dad said, “If you can’t afford to pay the fine – don’t speed.”
With that logic extrapolated:
“If you can afford the fine, full send!”
Bingo – after little brother’s wedding on a cruise ship in Ft Lauderdale, we had to get grandma to her home in Tampa. Dad tossed me the keys to the rented Lincoln Town Car and said – drive (I was near 30). Along Alligator Alley, he looks over, sees the speedo at 110, silently nods and goes back to sleep. Mom and Grandma in the back never had a clue how fast we were sailing. We were getting passed nudging the governor on that Lincoln.
I had to pass off driving when we hit traffic near Ft Myers, I was in a 90 mph mindset.
So that’s what the rest of you did while those of us in the wedding party took the cruise!
(I was Best Man/Matron of Dishonor – because I introduced them on the Hawaii Cruise)
Brother and wife took the cruise, we were given 4 or so hours on board prior to sail for wedding and a short reception. My wife refused to come along (family differences) and we had a toddler at home. I agreed to fly down to Tampa and drive grandma to the Atlantic coast the next day. Had a Chrysler 300 as my rental. TBH it was the first time her and I ever really connected one-on-one.
Ha. These two stories told one after the other remind me of one told by my next door neighbor’s father when I was a kid. He bought his first ever new car in 1958, a Buick Special, from a dealership about an hour away, and his father rode with him to turn in his trade-in and come back in his new car. On the way back, his father seemed to have fallen asleep in the passenger seat. Without Daddy to scold him for speeding, and not seeing any police or other vehicles as far as he could see on the four-lane around him, he decided to see what his shiny new Buick was capable of. So he wound it out to see what it would do.
After about 30 seconds of cruising at what was then his top land speed record, his father, without otherwise stirring or opening his eyes, reached up and cracked open the triangle vent window on his door.
“Daddy, if you’re hot, I can turn down the air conditioning. You don’t have to crack the window.”
“Oh, it’s not that. I’ve just always wondered what air going 115 mph sounds like.”
The Pennsylvania State Police bought a number of Rabbits back in the day, specifically diesel Rabbits, I assume were very useful in chasing down criminals fleeing in diesel Chevettes, Dodge St. Regises, or end of list
Reminds me of those Prius commercials a few years ago where the criminals escape because the police run out of gas. In a follow-up commercial the police catch them after outfitting a police cruiser Prius.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Amish and their horse and buggies but those probably did better than your mentioned list and had a better chance of getting away
I don’t know exactly why, but I’m picturing an Amish buggy trying to execute a PITT maneuver.
You can out run them but not outlast them. The Motorolla is the equalizer.
Ha, yeah, what gives with Southern law enforcement and cars like that? Well, part of it is due to the desire for positive publicity to counteract things like what happened with JT’s parents (no kidding, who wouldn’t still be salty about such a thing even decades later??) When I was in college many years ago I became friends with a classmate whose dad was a police chief in a nearby town and I always remembered what she told me about her dad’s advice that he gave her when she was in her teens which included tips such as that cops and criminals were “two sides of the same coin” (his exact phrase!!) and that if you were ever arrested or at least questioned as a person of interest to trust absolutely no one, not even the police, and keep your mouth shut except for when invoking your right to a lawyer (it’s sometimes not enough to say you “want” a lawyer, you have to be explicitly specific about *invoking* your right to a lawyer.)
The Tennessee Highway Patrol used to have some Beetles as part of their fleet, mostly for publicity, and there are even diecast models out there like this one, also from Greenlight like the Greensboro Rabbit: https://www.carmodel.com/it/greenlight/42790f/1-64/volkswagen/beetle-tennessee-police-state-trooper-1951/108385
Not my hometown but close enough that I would occasionally see them in the wild, the Blount County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Department used at least one Super Beetle as part of their fleet, also mostly for publicity: https://vochodiccionario.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/2/9/1429190/2078210.jpg?552×352
In my town, there was a reasonably famous VW Beetle police car. There might have been more in the country though, I’m not sure. Anyway, imagine a Beetle police car. I think the only thing it could catch are burglars on foot.
There was a new Beetle police car in Hamilton (Ontario) for a period of time in the late 90s to mid/late 2000s.
That’s almost more baffling. I understand that there weren’t a lot of choices in the ’70s for a police car, but by new Beetle time? I wonder why they chose that.
I think it was mostly used as a community outreach vehicle. Little more approachable than a crown vic I guess.
Yeah, that makes sense! The old Beetle here is taken out on national holidays, and every little kid loves it.
The sheriff’s office had a damn pro mod Monte Carlo as their DARE/community outreach car back in the 90s when I was a kid. Seized from somebody with a huge weed growing operation. It was a black 1985ish SS model with a blower sticking up thru the hood, big and skinny drag tires. So loud you could hear it half a mile away when they fired it up, scared all the really little kids.
This is just cool! I get it entirely Why would you turn down such an advertising opportunity?
Torch is really my doppelganger. Same age, same build, same weird fascination with no-performance cars and the details thereof – and today I find out our mothers had the same first name.
Entirely different part of the country (northern New England) and ethnic/religious background (French Canadian Catholic) but there’s a town by the same name as the city I grew up and now live in halfway between where Torch grew up and where he lives now.
Waterford, CT had Volvo 244 police cars. They were 244 Turbos dressed like DLs.
See, the only car dealership in Waterford was Caldrello, on the Post Road, and they sold Volvos (it’d b een called Volvo City, even).
So when the time came for new cruisers, instead of going to Whaling City Ford or MJ Sullivan Chevrolet, or even Michael Chrysler-Plymouth, all in the next town over, they went with the dealer in town.
It was a source of ridicule. Because Volvos are expensive, and it didn’t help the creeping snobbery of the times, when the hippies were really hard at work embracing yuppiedom.
A 244 is also a terrible police cruiser here in the States.
They’re kinda tight for our type of police outfitting and work.
They’re robust, but also more finicky with a K-Jet fed turbocharged 2.1 liter hooked up to an AW55 (or worse, an M46 manual w/ Laycock overdrive and terribly mis-matched ratios for a turbo engine).
This is no 305/Hydramatic combo. Or Windsor/AOD.
It didn’t last all that long, I suspect the operating budget got obliterated.
Caldrello also ran into its own sordid troubles. They were apparently selling cars they didn’t own, and owners were hiding them so as not to get them repossessed as the financial misdeeds rippled through the community. It was a thing.
I did see one of these ex-cruisers for sale at one point. It was baby blue, like my 83 245, but it had these weird lollipop brakelights in the back window. it was also more than I had to spend, and I wanted a 245 with either a V8 swap and Virgos on IPD springs and bars, or a ’93 in that late metallic green rocking an Eaton supercharger.
Neither happened. I got a 744 Turbo.
Several towns in Maine had 240 cop cars for a fairly long time. I don’t believe any of them were turbos though.
Cops were probably thinner back then, and certainly weren’t geared up like they are today. I don’t know how are local deputies do it with all the crap they have hanging off them, plus a full vest.
You know, maybe they weren’t actually turbos, just plain old B21Fs.
I’m sure they absolutely hated them compared to even a late-malaise American sedan; though not every cruiser had a V8, even then. I’ve heard tales of woe about going from a ’78 Malibu with 350 to a Fairmont w/2.3. Owies.
No, my understanding is that they were pretty well loved. Imagine sitting in a Crown Brick seat all day vs. a Volvo… Local small town cops have about zero need of performance, and the reality is that they just weren’t THAT much slower than a smog-choked V8 of those early ’80s days. And they were more reliable for sure. My town had a Dodge Diplomat fetish…
Yeah, that’s true – the seats were pretty great. And they burned way less fuel idling. It’s why every cruiser should be at least a hybrid
The Crown Vics were pretty comfortable, the Explorers are ok, the Chargers suck. The body worn gear load is ever-increasing, for sure.
Having rented a bunch of Crown Bricks thanks to Hertz having a sense of humor about what the word “upgrade” means, and having owned a BUNCH of Volvos, you and I have very different definitions of “comfortable”. There is absolutely no comparison.
Off-duty, out of uniform and unencumbered by all the rest of the gear that we wear, rest assured that I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was only comparing the 3 patrol vehicles I referred to in the context of being in and out them for 12 plus hours a shift.
It’s also not just the sitting part, it’s the ingress and egress, the door opening size, the roof height in relation to the seat/floor height, the placement of the cage that limits the rearward travel of the seat, and so on that dictate comfort and safety for me (especially at 6’2).
I’ve never had the opportunity to do all that in a Volvo, but I am intrigued with the concept!
Makes sense. I really feel for y’all today and the amazing amount of crap strapped all over you. I’m also 6’2 but VERY long of torso and short of leg, and for me, even regular Crown Bricks lack legroom. With a cage must be *horrible*. Constantly getting in and out of anything with all that gear has to suck.
Ultimately, 240s are SMALL cars by today’s standards, but if you have to sit in a seat for 12hrs about the only thing better would be a Peugeot 505. But getting in and out is going to be a chore, and good luck fitting the ubiquitous laptop in there given how narrow they are. Definitely simpler times 40 years ago. A gun on the hip and just a radio in the car.
I feel like we need the Checker Marathon of police cars – something purpose built for the task.
My favorite cop gear story – one of my clients is a city in VA, and their DR server room happens to be in the police station. The bathroom door has a BIG sign on it reminding the officers to turn off their body cams in the john – but only on the men’s. Makes me giggle every time thinking about how that sign came to be… There has to be a story, but the IT guys don’t know.
🙂
Is anyone else old enough to remember cops on TV shows always taking their billy clubs out of their belts before they got into their cruisers, then putting it back when they got out?
Now that I think about it, kids these days would probably lose their shit if the first image they saw of police arriving on a scene was two cops getting out of a cruiser with billy clubs already in their hands – at least until they simply put them away.
LOL -so true! I am certainly that old.
Do cops even carry them anymore? Or is it all just high-powered tazers and big magazine Glocks today? I should know this given that a bunch of my cousins are cops, but I never see them in uniform!
I can tell you this much: I have a very dear friend whose late father was a highly decorated California law enforcement officer, who worked for CHP, San Francisco PD, and the California Bureau of Investigation across over four decades. According to him, the most dangerous thing that the government ever did for policing was banning certain less-than-lethal, uh, “compliance devices” that were deemed to be inhumane to suspects. His favorite was a chrome tool made of the same metal as typical handcuffs, with a loop for a handle and a rounded hook with a blunt ball tip on it – it was made to grab a suspect’s wrist. Dad said that if he got that around a guy’s wrist, he could lead him around by his arm anywhere he wanted, like a horse on a bridle.
He said that he brought in his share of suspects who were booked with sprained wrists or a broken finger or something of that nature, but they all lived to stand trial. Nowadays, they are vastly more likely to just get shot to death. And this is a guy who once got a commendation for successfully bringing in not one, but two guys, both armed with pistols, who he disarmed and arrested without even drawing his own piece. He said he never had to take a shot at a human being in his entire career.
I doubt any of that sort of thing would make a difference today. Once you are close enough to handcuff somebody, chances are there isn’t going to be a gun battle unless they manage to grab yours or something. Regular handcuffs are pretty effective.
The overwhelming vast majority of cops never draw their weapon outside of the shooting range. I now have four cousins who are cops, not one has ever had to draw a gun while on duty across about 100 years of combined service (albeit in suburban/rural Maine, not exactly a hotbed of crime). One had to taze somebody once. Just in the era of the Internet and the 24hr news cycle, you hear about every single one who does, and the reality is that criminals are both crazier (whether actual mental illness or drug-induced) AND more heavily armed today.
As I have said here before, literally around the corner from me here in FL a Deputy was shot as he walked up to a routine traffic stop. Vest saved him. Another was killed in a gas station parking lot while he was trying to help a guy who was having a mental breakdown. That’s two in the just the past few years in my little suburban county in God’s Waiting Room, FL. This ain’t the ‘hood. And now pretty much all the rules about who can be walking around armed and with what have been tossed out the window. THAT sort of thing would certainly make me more than a little bit trigger happy – I very much understand the “shoot first, sort it out later” mentality when it happens.
You want calm, British style policing? Disarm the general populace and make mental health services freely and widely available. Neither of which is ever likely to happen in ‘Murica. It’s a literal arms race, and I prefer the cops win it when they have to.
Sorry for the rant, a subject that is a bit close to my heart, given my extended family.
You want chaotic, British style modern society? Try and disarm the general public. The British trying that on us as colonists is literally why there is a United States of America in the first place.
What’s chaotic about Britain today? The USA is the definition of chaotic. Any more chaotic and we would be a banana republic, and we are getting pretty damned close.
The Volvo police cars in Rapid City, South Dakota were turbofied:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152325435096798&id=57813171797&set=a.312205406797
The Volvo pictured is too old to have been a turbo. The four round headlight front end was only used from ’78-’80, the turbo debuted with the facelifted quad rectangular headlight cars in ’81. And I believe in ’81 only in the two door sedans, with the four doors and wagons coming in for ’82.
Unless they were aftermarket tuners or kits, which were around at the time, as well.
Doubtful. Nobody (in the US anyway, probably some drunken Swedes did it to pass the long dark winter nights) was turboing Volvos before Volvo themselves did it.
Given Volvo didn’t even offer the police package in the US themselves until ’82, it certainly is interesting that Rapid City had them at least a couple years earlier than that. But I guess you can slap a lightbar on anything, and few cars of the day were more rugged and reliable than a 240. Relatively expensive though.
I refuse to believe any of this!
Adrian and Torch were created in a genetic fertility lab.*runs off blubbering*
One of us got good all the good genes, and one all the bad genes.
Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers
And ate all your razors while pulling the waiters
The Gene Genie lives on his back
The Gene Genie loves chimney stacks
(The Gene Genie) he’s outrageous, he screams and he bawls
The Gene Genie, let yourself go, oh
Sounds a bit like the plot from Vonnegut’s book Slapstick
it’s part of the plot of Metal Gear Solid.
Perhaps MGS was based on the Vonnegut book.. or the film.
I had forgotten – the Vonnegut book was made into a sci-fi film.
Came out about three years before MGS was released, if google can be trusted.
Cast: Jerry Lewis, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slapstick_of_Another_Kind
Its bonkers!
It’s possible. Kojima pulls influences from all over the place, but especially books and movies.
I was thinking it sounds like the movie Twins. Torch = Danny DeVito and Adrian = Arnold Schwarzeneger?
Probably the one that was bombed this past weekend.
For reasons.
I wonder if the hokey cop accent was an homage/callback to Jackie Gleason’s character in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’. The first movie came out in 1977 and the second in 1980, so the timing would have been appropriate.
And J.W. Pepper from Live and Let Die.
I’ll barbbq yo asses in molasses!!!! You sumbitch!!!!
“What are you boy, some kind of a doomsday machine?”
“Let me have a Diablo Sandwich and a Dr Pepper and make it fast, I’m in a got-damn hurry.”
YOU WANT SUM’N?
Nope. Jackie Gleason’s Sheriff Justice was an amalgam of every pre-existing Southern cop cliche that was already real life where I grew up.
In the deep south of my childhood, it was a rite of passage to be told on the side of the road by a law enforcement officer, “This ain’t no racetrack, boah.”
Of course, if I had been a teenager in Alabama twenty years before, even if it were a racetrack, I probably would have lost to a State Trooper anyway:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdNEL41t9zsjprKI2-1Azx5GiP7pWKpBZLmQ&s
My hometown had a few Chevy Celebrity cop cars, plus a Caprice or two when I was a kid.
A diesel Rabbit of that era is sooo increeeedibly slooooow that even my old mans’ Cordoba with a fire-breathing lean-burn V8 would smoke it into last week.
Barrington, Illinois had Volvo police cars during this era, and they were also slow as shit. They were chosen not for speed, but for 80s-style yuppie glam.
Subcompact police cars need to make a comeback, they can hardly be worse than what’s out there as dedicated police packages now; the Durango’s straight junk, the Explorer isn’t exactly showering itself in glory in that role and the Tahoe seems like you might as well go on patrol in a U-Haul box truck.
That being said the diecast is inaccurate – it’s a 2-door and the car in the ad is clearly a 4-door.
Wow! Lagomorph crime must’ve been off the charts in Greensboro to merit a dedicated police cruiser. Also, what did you do to make your parents try and kill you?
What happened to the Rabbit police car? Probably the same thing that happened to pretty much every 1980 Rabbit. It rusted away to nothing.
Where is it now? You need to find it!
I really hope that a whoever was assigned to drive the Rabbit was named Jack.
Or Peter.
Maybe Eddie, if he loved a rainy night?
Back in the late 1970s, the police in LaConner, Washington, had a Renault Le Car for some kind of unspecified enforcement work. My guess is that Renault’s ad agency engineered that.
When I moved to Washington State in 1978, I drove my Renault 5 through LaConner one time, but never saw their Le Car.
Le Cop
LeCopper
LE Car
Why wasn’t I around to help them with this? Oh, right, I was a teenager in New Jersey.
The LeCar police cruiser was purchased to encourage foot patrols.
It’s so cute, the way the light bar looks half as big as the car, and the tip of the P in POLICE folds over a bit to the top of the fender. It’s like a little kid wearing Dad’s suit.